


Family Cares (Sometimes Too Much)

by LMX



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Ableism, Deaf Character, Gen, Kinda..., Spoilers, maybe? - Freeform, natasha did some of that overreacting stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-20 13:57:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/586102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LMX/pseuds/LMX
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'So you finally caved and got a service dog?'</p>
<p>Clint scowled at Natasha, forcing down a yelp at her sudden appearance at his shoulder, scowling deeper as Arrow turned around to lick her hand as if he'd known her all his life. He really was the worst guard dog ever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family Cares (Sometimes Too Much)

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS aka: Everything that you need to know if you haven't read the Hawkeye #1 comic...  
> Clint gets hurt (falling off things... again), and while he's healing up he finds a pizza-loving bad guy's guard dog (the dog loves the pizza. The bad guy might too, but I don't know or care about him...) who gets hurt too, and he (together with a vet) saves the dog and adopts him from the bad guy. Owies all around, but happy joys also. The dog's name is Arrow. This is coincidental (and ironic).

It wasn't often the Avengers got together as a team out of work, but a couple of them meeting up for dinner wasn't especially unusual, and less so when one of them was supposedly recuperating from a recent misadventure.

Steve had dropped an open invitation, letting them know he was in town and Tony was putting him up for a few nights, so they might as well have dinner on the billionaire while he was feeling generous and oh-so-rarely sociable.

Arrow was finally back on his feet and out of casts, and Clint was only a couple of days behind him on that front, and back in training to get healed bones back up to strength under a 60 lb draw. It was pure chance that Arrow's last post-surgery check-up was on the same night they'd planned to have dinner, but he figured Tony'd get a kick out of seeing him turn up with a dog in tow, so he'd just ambled up to the Tower with Arrow at his heel.

The security guards had given him a double-take as he walked by them, but they hadn't said anything. Clint had to guess they saw a lot of strange things happen around here, an Avenger wandering in to the building with an animal and standing waiting at the lift wasn't exactly up to their normal level of strange.

"So you finally caved and got a service dog?"

Clint scowled at Natasha, forcing down a yelp at her sudden appearance at his shoulder, scowling deeper as Arrow turned around to lick her hand as if he'd known her all his life. He really was the worst guard dog ever.

"You're not starting that shit again," he growled a little in response to her question as they got onto the lift, heading for Tony's 'social' floor. "He's a pet, Tasha. He wouldn't even make a decent guard dog." He gestured to where Arrow was nearly collapsing under the weight of his glee as Natasha scratched behind his ears.

"He's pretty cute though," Natasha had a sappy look on her face, and it was scaring the shit out of Clint. "In a rugged kinda way," she added, turning the dog's face to get a better look at his eye and the remnants of the still healing injuries. "You should get him an eye-patch. Fury'd get a kick out of that."

The door pinged open and Arrow jumped to attention, ears forward and tail wagging.

Across the room, in the huge open living space, Steve was laying out plates and cutlery around the table. His perpetual distant frown broke at the sight of the three of them.

"Now here's a guest we hadn't planned for!" he greeted, his attention entirely on Arrow as Tony leant through the nearest doorway, welding goggles on his head and grease on his face.

"I'll be ten minutes, I promise. I just..." he trailed off when it was obvious Steve wasn't paying him any attention. "What... what is that?" He stepped all the way into the room, revealing clothes in obvious disarray that had definitely not been chosen with work in mind. He'd been dressed for company when he'd been distracted by his most recent project.

Steve gave him a grin and beckoned him over. "It's a dog, Tony. Get in here and say hi."

"I can see it's a dog, Steve. Why is it... It's here. In the tower." He glanced around himself, as if to confirm he was still in the tower. "Why is it here?" He turned accusing eyes on Natasha and Clint.

"This is Arrow, I had to take him by the vets today, I figured you wouldn't mind him tagging along..." Clint frowned at Tony's distant expression. "We can go if..."

"No, no, no!" Tony waved his hands, suddenly smiling as if he'd only just realised what his face was doing. "Really, it's fine. It's not as if I don't take in strays all the time."

"Tony go and clean up, please, and... Oh, you are gorgeous!" Pepper's declaration threw them all a little as she stepped out of the lift, followed by a pizza delivery boy who was looking a little overwhelmed - by his location, the people he was in the company of, and by the sheer quantity of pizza he was carrying.

"Just put it down on the table," Natasha suggested at his lost stare. Pepper's attention was all on Arrow as she knelt in front of him, plying with him with pats and rubs.

Steve stepped up to help the poor kid unload the pizzas as Tony disappeared and reappeared moments later with slightly less grease on him. Taking a seat at the table, Tony kept his eyes on Pepper and Arrow as if he was watching his girlfriend being wooed away from him. Clint was sure the look on his face wouldn't be that dissimilar - Arrow had never looked that relaxed around him. The dog was practically in a pile of joy, falling on his side to give Pepper better access to his belly, his back leg twitching spasmodically.

"So, Hawkeye and Arrow, huh?" Tony asked, only a little sharply. Pepper returned to her petting with renewed enthusiasm and far more cooing at the disclosure of his name. "Does Fury know you picked up a side-kick?"

"Oh! We should get him a uniform!" Pepper exclaimed, taking a seat and opening pizza boxes, Arrow settling at her feet like a love-sick puppy. "And an eye-patch. The Director would love that!"

Clint watched Natasha roll her eyes as if she hadn't suggested exactly that less than ten minutes before.

"Did you know there are whole websites devoted to animals whose owners dress them and paint them to look like Avengers?" Steve asked as he laid out drinks on the table, face twisted into his usual disbelief and horror at 'modern antics'. Clint was fairly sure Tony was the one who'd shared the link, but he didn't point that out as everyone seemed to be ignoring Steve anyway.

His attention was suitably turned by Tasha's grin, and he knew what was coming. Again. "His disguise could be one of those sweet fluorescent jackets, you know, like for..."

"You're leaving this alone, Tasha," he growled, wishing he had something - anything - he could use to get her to back down. "Now."

"Or what?" she pushed, smiling sickly-sweet.

Clint launched himself from his seat, landing squarely over her with his forearm across her throat. "I started training again this week, Tasha. Wanna see how strong I am?"

With a put-upon sigh, Pepper pulled a chair to one side as Natasha tried to flip Clint and ended up rolling them both across the floor together. Steve and Tony were already taking bets from the other side of the table, pizza in-hand.

Arrow barked a couple of times - apparently more in amusement than out of any fear for his master's safety. Clint, by this point, was pinned and in an armlock that was just the wrong side of playful.

"Okay, okay, I give," he huffed out, rolling to his feet and falling gracelessly into a chair at the table. Natasha took another chair, smiling smugly.

"So..." Tony asked through a smirk. "Anyone want to share with the class?"

Clint shoved a piece of pizza in his mouth before giving Natasha a pointed glare. She shook her head in amusement, before explaining: "I've been trying to talk Clint into taking on a trained service dog for years."

Tony frowned before turning to Clint. "This about your..." he made a vague gesture at his own ears, and Natasha sniggered at what looked a lot more like the globally accepted sign for crazy than any implication of hearing loss. Clint grit his teeth forcefully.

"This is all because a couple of years back Tasha raided my apartment with a first response team when I didn't come to the door fast enough." He shared a mocking grin with the others, as if confiding some old joke.

"You didn't come to the door at all, Clint," Natasha returned with obvious and deep seated frustration. "I knocked and you didn't answer, less than three hours after you'd signed yourself out of the hospital AMA."

"AMA?" Steve murmured to Pepper, and Tony leaned across them both to explain the concept of 'against medical advice', while stealing a piece of pizza from the furthest box. The other two didn't even seem to notice the interruption to the obviously long-running and often rehashed argument.

"I have a doorbell for a reason, Tasha," the eye-roll was almost audible.

"That doorbell is a public hazard," Natasha scoffed. "It's a hundred decibels at least. It was 2 am, I would have woken the entire building."

"It's no louder than eighty five, which is my threshold without the aids in, and the sounder is in my bedroom. The only reason it ever bothered you was because you were in my bed the first time you heard it go off." Clint grimaced at how that sounded, turning to Tony's suddenly very interested grin. "I was sleeping on the couch," he added, pointedly.

"I looked through the window and saw you lying on the floor. I thought you were in trouble."

"I was trying to straighten out my back. I'd just spent three days crouching on a rooftop," Clint was right in Natasha's face, snapping back at her aggravated tone, Steve was on the edge of his seat preparing to separate them while Tony was holding back hysterical laughter.

"You weren't moving," Natasha's voice had gone low and dark. "I was worried."

"So I fell asleep. I was home, it was late, maybe I didn't make it to the bed. But you phoned Coulson before you rang my doorbell." There's hesitation on that name, still, but it's getting shorter. It's getting easier for them to remember he's gone. "There was a twenty-man response team outside my door when you finally decided to break in through the damn window. And then you didn't even bother trying to get my attention, you went straight for my neck."

The others all flinched at the concept of falling asleep alone and waking up to someone's fingers on their neck.

"I was checking for a pulse," she objected, looking at least vaguely embarrassed.

"You were lucky I didn't kill you on the spot. Shouting at me didn't even occur to you?"

"I didn't know if there was a hostile in the apartment," she offered. That sounded pretty weak to everyone.

"And then you spent two months trying to talk Fury into assigning me a service dog. You filed paperwork."

"I was *worried*," Natasha ground out, sounding like she was finishing the argument, tensing as if she was thinking about making it physical again.

"I think what you're missing here, Hawkeye," Tony let that statement sink in as he interrupted what was looking to escalate further, "Is that the Widow doesn't like to be worried."

Steve and Pepper looked slightly startled at Tony's observation, which while quite accurate was far beyond the kind of social understanding Tony usually showed.

"If she'd been thinking instead of worrying, things would never have gotten that far," Clint grumbled, not meeting Natasha's eyes.

Natasha made a dismissive noise and grabbed another slice of pizza.

In the sudden quiet, Arrow jumped up and scrambled around the room a handful of times manically before settling in to a dizzying circle as he chased his own tail for a moment. He collapsed back at Clint's feet and panted happily at the sudden exertion.

"We've got a hell of a lot of training to do, Arrow," Tony observed, and Clint groaned as he pulled a tablet across the table towards himself and started researching dog training methods.

Natasha's smug grin was going to take a lot to shift.


End file.
